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Speaker 5: housekeeping for today. Also, Ryan's tie has been straightened out. Yes,
Speaker 5: we fixed that problem about two seconds before air.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't want people feeling off balanced watching the show.
Speaker 4: Well we kind of do a little bit, that's true,
Speaker 4: all right. So we're going to get into the fallout
Speaker 4: from the Rafa masker, followed by a second Rafa masker,
Speaker 4: followed by the White House twisting itself into to try
Speaker 4: to figure out whether or not Israel has launched an invasion,
Speaker 4: sort of like the kind of dystopian version of Angels
Speaker 4: dancing on a pin, Like how many IDF soldiers and
Speaker 4: tanks can like dance in the center of Rafa before
Speaker 4: it's an invasion, you know, bring all the philosophers out
Speaker 4: to try to.
Speaker 3: Figure this one out.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, Mexico has joined the ICJ case that South Africa
Speaker 4: has brought, and Algeria is now saying that it's going
Speaker 4: to bring the ICC case before the Security Council. They're
Speaker 4: circulating a partition, they're circulating a resolution, which means that
Speaker 4: that could be voted on the next five or ten days.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about all the politics around that.
Speaker 4: We got Democrats absolutely freaking out, finally waking up and
Speaker 4: discovering that their nominee is Joe Biden. Yes, if they
Speaker 4: watched Counterpoints or breaking Points regularly, we could have told
Speaker 4: them that was going to be your nominee, like it
Speaker 4: was headed that direction.
Speaker 3: And he's not popular.
Speaker 5: No, we knew that.
Speaker 4: But apparently this is news to them and it's causing
Speaker 4: a full blown pain in Washington.
Speaker 6: The real news to them is that the economy is
Speaker 6: actually not great. That's what they're like.
Speaker 3: People are not tobably happy about that.
Speaker 4: There was a poll showing that people think unemployment is
Speaker 4: the highest in like forty years, when actually it's kind
Speaker 4: of the lowest in forty years. Very very weird times
Speaker 4: we're living in. Meanwhile, Donald Trump about to get convicted.
Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 5: Jerry, well, we'll talk about this, but the jury is
Speaker 5: quite literally out today, so they're a verdict could basically
Speaker 5: come at any time.
Speaker 3: And their good services like scoping out the jail.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a CEBE News CBS News report. We can
Speaker 5: get into. They buried that way down at the bottom
Speaker 5: of their story if you're seeing twenty twenty four on
Speaker 5: the screen. In addition to Biden, also Robert de Niro
Speaker 5: is out in the streets talking about how great New
Speaker 5: York is and how Donald trumpolis to destroyed New York.
Speaker 5: We've got some really interesting footage from Manhattan yesterday. Jerry
Speaker 5: and Barry not a new but not a new band. Actually,
Speaker 5: Jerry Seinfeld them Barry Wise sat down for an interview
Speaker 5: Harvard at the same time came out with this idea
Speaker 5: that they're now going new We adhere to institutional neutrality,
Speaker 5: so we have some news on the campus front. And
Speaker 5: Ryan's friend Javier Milae. Yes, we'll plunge in the PESO
Speaker 5: down in Argentina.
Speaker 6: So we'll talk about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then Donald Trump with some new comments about
Speaker 4: whether or not he's going to pardon Assange. And if
Speaker 4: you're looking at that little ICC banner under there, under that,
Speaker 4: we're also or I forget where we were going to
Speaker 4: talk about this, we're also going to talk about the
Speaker 4: new Georgia law that was passed to basically make foreign
Speaker 4: NGO's register as foreign agents, which has the State Department
Speaker 4: absolutely freaking out, and which has a lot of interesting
Speaker 4: implications for the Russia Ukraine war and the kind of
Speaker 4: geopolitics around that region.
Speaker 5: And one thing I want to add, just before we
Speaker 5: get into the news of the day out of Israel,
Speaker 5: twenty deaths actually twenty five as of a few hours ago.
Speaker 5: Twenty five tornado deaths just across Memorial Day weekend from
Speaker 5: tornadoes that ripped through seven states. So a lot of
Speaker 5: international news, a lot of domestic news. It's an election year,
Speaker 5: but my goodness, that's a that's a horrible situation in
Speaker 5: so many communities throughout you know what some folks would
Speaker 5: consider fly over country.
Speaker 3: It's just tough. Yeah. Indeed, meanwhile, we can put up
Speaker 3: a zero here.
Speaker 4: News is emerging that it was actually Boeing that produced
Speaker 4: the bomb that created.
Speaker 6: The fire, the GBU thirty nine that led.
Speaker 4: To that led to dozens of Palestinians being incinerated in
Speaker 4: what they what they had expected to be as a safe.
Speaker 3: Zone, and we can put up a one here.
Speaker 4: The reverberations of this kind of continue throughout the world,
Speaker 4: even as the Netnah who accepted responsibility said it was
Speaker 4: a tragic mistake. I think was his framing. Israel pledges
Speaker 4: going to investigate itself. There was a there were new
Speaker 4: renewed strikes on the same area, and actually, I think
Speaker 4: just eating from the first paragraph of this Associated Press
Speaker 4: article that we just put up gives you a sense
Speaker 4: of how the world is covering this and thinking about
Speaker 4: this at the moment they right. Israeli shelling and air
Speaker 4: strikes killed at least thirty seven people, most of them
Speaker 4: sheltering intents outside the southern Gaza city of Rafa, overnight
Speaker 4: and on Tuesday, pummeling the same area where strikes triggered
Speaker 4: a deadly fire days earlier in a camp for displaced Palestinians.
Speaker 4: According to witnesses, emergency workers and hospital officials. Hard to
Speaker 4: think of a more devastating paragraph that a neutral news
Speaker 4: organization like the Associated Press could put together about.
Speaker 3: Anything going on in the world.
Speaker 4: People getting incinerated intents just days after they were incinerated,
Speaker 4: other people were incinerated intense and so this has left
Speaker 4: the State Department and the White House to scramble for answers.
Speaker 4: Let's take a look at how Matt Miller over the
Speaker 4: State Department handled this.
Speaker 7: Yesterday when it comes to the continuation of Israel using
Speaker 7: precision guided munitions in Rafa.
Speaker 8: At this point, the US still supports that.
Speaker 9: We have made no change to our policy.
Speaker 8: So just is it a yes or no.
Speaker 9: You made no change in our policy. We have made
Speaker 9: clear that if there was a full scale military operation
Speaker 9: there would be some change, but as of yet, it's
Speaker 9: not a change we do. We do support, as we
Speaker 9: always have, their ability to go after legitimate Hamas terrorists,
Speaker 9: and that of course includes using American provided weapons, but
Speaker 9: we expect them to do so in a way that
Speaker 9: minimize the civilian.
Speaker 7: Arm And then just the last question with regard to
Speaker 7: the reports of the Israeli tanks that are in central Rafa.
Speaker 8: Right now, I know you said you don't you have
Speaker 8: verified those reports?
Speaker 7: Has the US asked Israel about those reports and an
Speaker 7: explanation for why those tanks might be in central Ruwa?
Speaker 9: So we are in constant dialogue with them about their
Speaker 9: military operations and potential military operations in Rafa. I'm not
Speaker 9: going to get into any specific conversations, but we are
Speaker 9: constantly interrogating them about what they're doing and what they're playing.
Speaker 8: So it's safe to say Eve interarrogets is not going to.
Speaker 3: Go beyond that.
Speaker 4: The IDF response, meanwhile, or I don't even know if
Speaker 4: this was the IDF or some like kind of clowns
Speaker 4: associated with them, was to release what they said was
Speaker 4: audio of two gossins talking in rough if we can
Speaker 4: put this up on the screen. People immediately flagged a
Speaker 4: bunch of problems with this. A they tried this exact
Speaker 4: thing months ago, and it was very quickly called out
Speaker 4: to be a fake conversation.
Speaker 3: Some of it just sounds fake in the way.
Speaker 4: That people are so clearly and explicitly identifying themselves as
Speaker 4: and exonerating the IDF. But also if you notice any
Speaker 4: audio or any phone calls you hear from Gaza since
Speaker 4: actually before October seventh foot accelerated. Since then you hear
Speaker 4: drone footage, I mean, I mean you heard in the
Speaker 4: background it is just the ever present sound of Gaza. Now,
Speaker 4: somehow the Israelis, who were doing a lot of surveillance
Speaker 4: forgot to add in the drone sound in the background
Speaker 4: to add a little bit of kind of authenticity, uh
Speaker 4: to that clip. Basically, what the clip was trying to
Speaker 4: say is that it was a it was a jeep
Speaker 4: that was filled with explosives, that that was owned by
Speaker 4: Hamas and that's why, that's why it blew up. That
Speaker 4: was one of multiple different theories that has that have
Speaker 4: been that have been thrown that have been thrown around,
Speaker 4: uh since then, and you can put up a actually
Speaker 4: we'll move to.
Speaker 3: That in a second.
Speaker 4: Emily, what what's your what's your what's your thought on
Speaker 4: the kind of Israeli response?
Speaker 10: Uh?
Speaker 3: So so far.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's interesting then that Yahu came out
Speaker 5: and said that this was quote a tragic mistake, because
Speaker 5: I think that really is reflective of how much pressure
Speaker 5: he understands that he's under now. Because their argument is
Speaker 5: essentially that they have the best civilian to military very
Speaker 5: ratio of any modern army, and the implication of that is, yeah,
Speaker 5: a lot of civilians are dying, but it's at a
Speaker 5: rate that is in some way as just as you know,
Speaker 5: can possibly be done. And to an extent, there's been
Speaker 5: a sort of owning right and owning up to and
Speaker 5: just sort of coldly owning up to the ratio the
Speaker 5: deaths of civilians. And at this point, now that Netanyahu
Speaker 5: is caught between a rock and a hard place with
Speaker 5: the Biden administration, I do think it's interesting that he
Speaker 5: came out and so that this was a tragic mistake.
Speaker 5: When we're going to get to this in just a minute,
Speaker 5: it doesn't look like if this was just a mistake.
Speaker 5: It is reflective of deep incompetence and I think a
Speaker 5: lack of let's say, a lack of judgment discernment as
Speaker 5: to what was possibly going to happen in that case.
Speaker 5: And also just truly I cannot imagine. Let me just
Speaker 5: put it this way, I don't even care that you know,
Speaker 5: they say they were trying to hit a different part
Speaker 5: of this area. It was obviously endangering the lives of civilians.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was so obviously endangering the lives of civilians,
Speaker 5: and many civilians and people. By the way, this makes
Speaker 5: it harder down the road for Israel to do evacuations
Speaker 5: of civilians because they don't trust it. They're in areas
Speaker 5: that they're supposed to be safe, So why leave their
Speaker 5: homes and their families if the place that they're trekking
Speaker 5: to is going to be unsafe, if they're just going
Speaker 5: to get killed in another part of Gaza, if their
Speaker 5: children are just going to get killed in another part
Speaker 5: of Gaza. So I mean, I think Netanyahu is trying
Speaker 5: to balance all of the international pressures here, but this
Speaker 5: is such a blatant if it's a mistake that in
Speaker 5: and of itself is reflective of something horrible. If we
Speaker 5: even take them their word of that.
Speaker 4: Yea, and it didn't seem like it led to much
Speaker 4: reflection because we can put up a five here at
Speaker 4: Al Jazeer, by the way, you know, has been banned
Speaker 4: in Israel, and so their reporters have been yanked. There
Speaker 4: was that incident where they even took an AP camera
Speaker 4: from near Gaza, because but then then they give it
Speaker 4: back because Al Jazeera had a was using AP as
Speaker 4: a wire service. But so instead they have hin Kadri
Speaker 4: who's a freelance journalist in Gaza.
Speaker 3: Here she is reporting.
Speaker 4: From one of the areas that is supposed to be
Speaker 4: a designated safe zum. To Emily's point, let's let's play
Speaker 4: this interview with hint.
Speaker 1: It went back just right now to the last leaflet
Speaker 1: that Israelis dropped andre and the place that was targeted
Speaker 1: right now was Block two three hundred and sixty. In
Speaker 1: this leaflet, the Israeli forces mentioned that they're calling people
Speaker 1: to evacuate to all the areas, the humanitarian areas to
Speaker 1: Del Bala, Hanunis and Almasse area. And one of these
Speaker 1: areas that men was mentioned is Block two three hundred sixty,
Speaker 1: which has been targeted right now. So yes, this place
Speaker 1: was us safe. This place was designated as a humanitarian
Speaker 1: area according to the last leaflet that was dropped by
Speaker 1: the Israeli forces on people in And the.
Speaker 4: Other key point that we can put up a six
Speaker 4: here is that no matter what you think about, you
Speaker 4: know which leaflets.
Speaker 3: You know which ones are included in the.
Speaker 4: Safe zone which aren't, Like as you were launching these missiles,
Speaker 4: as you're dropping these bombs, a drone is able to
Speaker 4: see what's below and here's some images of what you
Speaker 4: see below. Like you can tell that you're dropping them
Speaker 4: basically onto a tent city. Yes, obviously like setting all
Speaker 4: the complications aside.
Speaker 5: So if you're listening to this, there's a map up
Speaker 5: on the screen where you see the just complete proximity
Speaker 5: to what Israel says it was targeting to red tents
Speaker 5: and to the area that ended up being hit, and
Speaker 5: it is I mean, words can't do justice. It's just
Speaker 5: so close. You should look up the map because this
Speaker 5: is by their own sort of emission. This is their
Speaker 5: own explanation for what happened. And you know they say
Speaker 5: that in the this is their words. The precision attack
Speaker 5: in northwest Rafa, they killed the chief of staff of Hamas,
Speaker 5: they killed the senior Hamas official to deaths. That's according
Speaker 5: to the IDF. Now, I think if the ultimate goal
Speaker 5: is eliminating Hamas, even this precision strike apparently that killed
Speaker 5: two Hamas officials according to the IDEF. Again, when people
Speaker 5: are seeing everything else on their screens and they see
Speaker 5: and they think through the likelihood of Hamas being fully
Speaker 5: eliminated doesn't feel right.
Speaker 6: The calculations don't feel right.
Speaker 4: To people, right, And it's and it's fine to criticize
Speaker 4: HAMAS for you know, having its officials within civilian populations.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's great, But that is the case.
Speaker 4: It's the reality all guerrilla armies from an American revolution
Speaker 4: Army up until the Vietcong through HAMAS.
Speaker 3: That's that's what they do.
Speaker 4: The question is what does what does their adversary do
Speaker 4: and does the adversary respect in the national humanitarian law
Speaker 4: or laws of war. If you have a couple of
Speaker 4: Hamas figures surrounded by civilians and tents, that doesn't that
Speaker 4: two wrongs don't make a right. Doesn't mean you drop
Speaker 4: a bomb and blow up all the tents there and
Speaker 4: incinerate people within them.
Speaker 5: Well, especially when the ultimate goal of court eliminating Hamas, right,
Speaker 5: that is not an attainable goal, right.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly. Set aside the morality of it getting rid
Speaker 4: of two senior officials who can be replaced by other
Speaker 4: mid level officials will and then and then creating enormous
Speaker 4: global backlash against yourself and and leading to the recruitment
Speaker 4: of you can only I would imagine that HAMAS has
Speaker 4: more people trying to enlist, you know, from Gaza than
Speaker 4: it has the capacity to kind of arm and structure
Speaker 4: into an organization at this point, like you could kill
Speaker 4: they start out with thirty thousand, they could kill all
Speaker 4: thirty thousand. But if you're living through that, you're probably
Speaker 4: just going to be like signing, sign me up?
Speaker 3: What like why not?
Speaker 5: I think there's a really serious argument that none of
Speaker 5: this is making is really safe.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 4: That's the counter terror argument that people like David Petraeus
Speaker 4: always made, that you can't kind of kill your way
Speaker 4: out of it. The old every terrorist you kill creates
Speaker 4: two or three like do we take that seriously or not?
Speaker 4: And so Nikki Haley certainly doesn't. If one of the
Speaker 4: more psychotic things that I've seen in this war, and
Speaker 4: it's not unique to this one, but it does. You know,
Speaker 4: social media puts it in our face a lot more.
Speaker 4: Is this phenomenon of tourists going over to Israel and
Speaker 4: signing and putting messages on bombs. So Nikki Haley boasting here,
Speaker 4: she wrote, she writes finish them like she's signed a
Speaker 4: year book. She writes, America hearts Israel, Yes always, Nicki Haley,
Speaker 4: it is like a yearbook.
Speaker 5: That's exactly what it looks like in her loopy cursive
Speaker 5: America hearts Israel always. Nicki Haley finished them, you know, Ryan,
Speaker 5: she should have signed the GBU thirty nine, the Boeing.
Speaker 4: From South Carolina, right, I mean Boeing's like main headquarters
Speaker 4: is in her like she was on the board, right,
Speaker 4: She was.
Speaker 5: On the board of Boeing until she ran for president.
Speaker 5: And that GBU thirty nine is what was used. As
Speaker 5: we mentioned earlier, the element is as well, if we
Speaker 5: put it back up in the street at the screen,
Speaker 5: that's the one that was used by Israel in the
Speaker 5: tent city attack in Rafa, as Jordanald points out here.
Speaker 5: So really, Nicki Haley should have been signing that that
Speaker 5: old GBU thirty nine.
Speaker 4: Yes, And Nicki Haley saw her wealth explode after being
Speaker 4: governor of South Carolina, largely by joining Boeing, Yeah, and
Speaker 4: using her political power to make sure, you know that
Speaker 4: they can sell more weapons to the United States, which
Speaker 4: weapons that were then sent to Israel, weapons that were
Speaker 4: then dropped on this Rafa tent encampment that then incinerated
Speaker 4: a lot of women and children while she was there
Speaker 4: signing other bombs.
Speaker 6: I bet she.
Speaker 5: Didn't anticipate that. By the way, I tried to pin
Speaker 5: down the exact timing. It's hard to know when the
Speaker 5: picture was actually taken, because when it was posted and
Speaker 5: taken is different. And I actually did try to chase
Speaker 5: down the bottom of when that was happening. It was
Speaker 5: pretty it's pretty difficult to know for sure what the
Speaker 5: timing was on that, but certainly, I mean it reminds
Speaker 5: me actually of a lot of what happened during the
Speaker 5: Cold War, where my fellow Conservatives were sort of doing
Speaker 5: something very similar and reveling in the brazenness of you know,
Speaker 5: like the Contras, a good example of the Contras, and
Speaker 5: you know, because they ultimately believed this was a just war,
Speaker 5: that this was Manichean good versus evil. And I actually
Speaker 5: respect the position of completely owning it and being honest,
Speaker 5: and so to some extent, respect to you, Nikki Haley
Speaker 5: for putting it all on display, all on display.
Speaker 3: In that's for sure burned in a tent camp.
Speaker 5: And I mean it's clarity if anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, politically, she's not like she's actually putting herself at risk,
Speaker 4: but it's.
Speaker 5: Yes, but yes, absolutely, but yeah, but she's actually like
Speaker 5: totally aware of the scene on the international stage, aware
Speaker 5: of all the social media images of children, of women,
Speaker 5: of the just utter destruction, and she's saying, I don't
Speaker 5: give an f. Basically, finish them.
Speaker 4: The US apparently doesn't give much of an f about
Speaker 4: building things. If you want a metaphor for the entire policy,
Speaker 4: you can put this element up from CNN. The US
Speaker 4: peer constructed off Gaza has broken apart. Images that were
Speaker 4: floating around the internet. Hall Flow had one of it.
Speaker 4: Just it just sinking and people fail me, just like
Speaker 4: kind of laughing at oh my god, like just the dark,
Speaker 4: the dark comedy of it all. Looks like Mack was
Speaker 4: saying an X ray of a broken pinky there.
Speaker 3: I was told by.
Speaker 4: Sources there that a now that now the US military
Speaker 4: is contracting tug boats at massive expense to try to
Speaker 4: fix a bunch of this.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: There were workers stranded on the on the on the
Speaker 4: beach basically with not even not even sleeping bags. I
Speaker 4: mean it's you know, all suffering is relative, but you know,
Speaker 4: workers who signed up to build this this pier did
Speaker 4: not sign up to sleep overnight in Gaza on the
Speaker 4: on the beach with no tent, no sleeping bag, no
Speaker 4: no real certainty of what was going to happen next
Speaker 4: because there's this huge fear among American policy makers that
Speaker 4: they can't ever have an American soldier boot on the ground,
Speaker 4: so they have to try to figure out how they're
Speaker 4: gonna not build this or build this.
Speaker 3: Without that potentially happening.
Speaker 4: So it's work for the workers end up taking the
Speaker 4: lumps and the.
Speaker 3: Three hundred and twenty million dollars.
Speaker 4: But that's going to say that's that's only what's been
Speaker 4: spent so far now fixing this two months.
Speaker 5: By the way, people remember he kind of caught the
Speaker 5: Pentagon off guard by announcing.
Speaker 6: This very politically in his State of the Union speech.
Speaker 5: So that's March. It's operational by I think the date
Speaker 5: was May seventeenth. So three hundred and twenty million dollars,
Speaker 5: three hundred and twenty million dollars for a thousand metric
Speaker 5: tons of aid that got into Gaza. Now whether that
Speaker 5: was actually distributed was another question.
Speaker 3: Has been distributed.
Speaker 5: Sabrinas thing, Yeah, said a thousand metric tons. That's our
Speaker 5: government's own explanation for that's their own number for how
Speaker 5: much was brought in in a two month, three hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty million dollar project that saw people being fired
Speaker 5: at that broke apart that had just the most embarrassing saga.
Speaker 5: It's the most embarrassing life arc and was damaged by
Speaker 5: rough seas, as The New York Times put in a headline.
Speaker 4: Right they claimed rough seas what I was told us
Speaker 4: that it was basically high tide. Like it's not even
Speaker 4: like there were no real rough seas, Like there are
Speaker 4: rough seas in the Mediterranean.
Speaker 6: Who could have seen it coming?
Speaker 3: But apparently this was just basically high tide. Yeah, there's some.
Speaker 4: Very gentle spring breezes which it just couldn't couldn't stand up.
Speaker 4: So and all of this just because Israel wouldn't let
Speaker 4: in sufficient amounts of aid.
Speaker 3: Through just over land. It's like, why are we building
Speaker 3: up here?
Speaker 4: Aren't there isn't it connected by land to Israel and Egypt?
Speaker 3: Like we could just move aid in through trucks, yes, And.
Speaker 5: Are you still going to have a distribution problem when
Speaker 5: the aid gets to the land and.
Speaker 4: The other The other idiotic thing was they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: well they won't let aid in through these choke points here,
Speaker 4: so we'll build a We'll build a pier over here,
Speaker 4: and then that will move things faster. Instead the IDF
Speaker 4: sent all of its inspectors over to Cyprus and just
Speaker 4: blocked everything at Cyprus, so it couldn't even get on
Speaker 4: the ships and get over to the Peer. It's like,
Speaker 4: your problem was not a lack of entry points into Gaza, it.
Speaker 5: Was a three hundred and twenty million dollar public relations effort, right.
Speaker 4: Well, a lot of people thought it was like this
Speaker 4: was the beginning of the US occupation of Gaza. So
Speaker 4: I guess at least the upside is no, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4: I can't even get it to keep floating in fairness.
Speaker 5: I mean, there were people fired on and had someone
Speaker 5: gotten had an American whether a contractor or troops gotten
Speaker 5: like actually severely hurt killed, which easily could have happened,
Speaker 5: easily could have happened. So to some extent, it's just
Speaker 5: it's just luck, cher dumb luck, even in this ridiculous
Speaker 5: arc of the Peer, that it didn't become something bigger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we did want to take a minute to
Speaker 4: talk about this incredible story over at nine plus nine
Speaker 4: seven two magazine that they wrote in ordination with Israeli
Speaker 4: news organization Local Call and The Guardian. If we can
Speaker 4: put up this first element of the b block here
Speaker 4: surveillance and interference.
Speaker 3: Israel's covert war on the ICC exposed.
Speaker 4: Just incredible reporting here showing the way that the Israeli
Speaker 4: government has done exactly that, spent the last ten years
Speaker 4: basically surveilling top prosecutors at the ICC, monitoring their communications,
Speaker 4: following whoever it is that they're talking with, and also
Speaker 4: directly threatening them and their families in the most kind
Speaker 4: of over the top, mob like kind of way.
Speaker 5: Most odd cracking people. Yeah, well, ran another part of
Speaker 5: the story. It reminds me what we talked about earlier
Speaker 5: in the show, about this sort of difficult position from
Speaker 5: a PR standpoint, and I don't want to talk about
Speaker 5: this just as PR. I'm explaining PR to get to
Speaker 5: the moral question. If you're NET in Yahoo, if you're
Speaker 5: sort of hawks or your coalition depends on hawks in
Speaker 5: the Israeli government, you have a hard time not just
Speaker 5: owning that ultimately you have contempt for this, this concept
Speaker 5: of international law, and I do think to some extent
Speaker 5: it has been weaponized against Israel by Partisans anti Israel
Speaker 5: partisans over the years, and that's built up this resentment
Speaker 5: and content towards the concept itself, which was obviously developed
Speaker 5: after World's War two, well not just developed after World
Speaker 5: War two, but codified in a lot of ways after
Speaker 5: World War two. And I think ultimately what the story
Speaker 5: shows is that you know, this is where they are.
Speaker 5: That's yeah, and it's just hard to be morally. The
Speaker 5: answer to this is just to say we don't respect
Speaker 5: international It's like the Biden administration suddenly respecting the ICC
Speaker 5: and Ukraine. But well, you know, we have we're not
Speaker 5: a party to it. And when it comes to Israel,
Speaker 5: nobody has a consistent position on international law except perhaps
Speaker 5: Israel under the surface.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, indeed, it's quite clear.
Speaker 4: I just would encourage people to go read that story,
Speaker 4: a great, great piece of great piece of journalism. And relatedly,
Speaker 4: Algeria is now circulating a resolution if we can put
Speaker 4: up this next element, basically trying to push the Security
Speaker 4: Council to enforce the ICJ's most recent order decides that
Speaker 4: Israel quote shall immediately halt its military offensive and any
Speaker 4: other action in RAFA demands in immediate ceasefire, demands that
Speaker 4: the parties comply with their obligations under international law and
Speaker 4: relations to all persons they detain. If we have the
Speaker 4: Algerian Ambassador to the United Nations here grabbed by some
Speaker 4: reporters yesterday.
Speaker 3: If we could put up b B three.
Speaker 1: Resolution here that you have assumed circulated, that might happen tomorrow.
Speaker 11: For sure, Algeria will circulate this afternoon draft resolution on.
Speaker 6: And what's it gonna say?
Speaker 2: What's the moving What do you want a.
Speaker 11: Short text, decisive text to stop the killing?
Speaker 8: Will you invoke the ICJ?
Speaker 4: Short decisive texts will invoke the ic J decision. Not
Speaker 4: only did Mexico join with South Africa in South Africa's case,
Speaker 4: you had France, a member of the Security Council, come
Speaker 4: out and support this.
Speaker 3: Here's here's the French. I always love to hear from
Speaker 3: the French.
Speaker 12: There is no safe zoon for Palestian civilians in Rauffa.
Speaker 12: Prisidon Macro has expressed his indignation at the Istralian strikes
Speaker 12: which have claimed many victims among the displaced persons in Rafa. Yesterday.
Speaker 12: Another strike against the camp kill civilians this morning as well.
Speaker 12: These Israeli operations hast stopped immediately as requested by the
Speaker 12: International Court of Justice.
Speaker 4: As Emily was pointing out, it's impressive to kind of
Speaker 4: reunite Algeria and France a question of international law and order.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, that's a good point.
Speaker 4: At I asked treat A Parsi for a sense of
Speaker 4: his timeline on this, and he thinks there could be
Speaker 4: a vote before the Security Council in five to ten days.
Speaker 4: The vote will obviously be overwhelming in favor, but the
Speaker 4: United States has a veto, and so will the US
Speaker 4: veto it. Certainly they didn't veto the last thing, because
Speaker 4: there the calculation last time was that it's it's a
Speaker 4: question of what's more embarrassing on the one hand, vetoing
Speaker 4: something the entire world wants to happen, on the other hand,
Speaker 4: letting something go through over their kind of objections, and
Speaker 4: then just slow looking at not letting anything actually happen, right,
Speaker 4: and further showing that the UN doesn't actually have much
Speaker 4: enforcement mechanism unless somebody like France is going to take
Speaker 4: it upon themselves to go and force it. Like you know,
Speaker 4: as Andrew Jackson said about Supreme Court, you know they
Speaker 4: made their decision, now let them enforce it.
Speaker 5: I also think the so like all eyes on RAFA
Speaker 5: has been going viral this week. I think there are
Speaker 5: different pressures just because of the incursion into Rafa that
Speaker 5: are going to weigh on Biden. But that's also pressures
Speaker 5: from people who are digging their heels in and continue
Speaker 5: like Nikki Heeley going over there and signing shells finish
Speaker 5: them fing to Moss. That's I mean, I think it's
Speaker 5: a You're right, I shouldn't have been so quick to
Speaker 5: say that. They'll almost certainly veto it. We'll have to
Speaker 5: see what Biden decides.
Speaker 4: I mean, certainly that's the smart money that they would veto. Yeah,
Speaker 4: for sure, all of this is happening while there are
Speaker 4: renewed peace negotiations underway, or negotiations towards some type of
Speaker 4: a ceasefire. And so we talked last week about Egypt
Speaker 4: getting blamed for scuttling them. We've got kind of an
Speaker 4: update on that, but you can put up this Middle
Speaker 4: East Eye article, you know. So, So basically on Friday,
Speaker 4: Burns see director Burns met with UH, went with Kutter
Speaker 4: and Israel to try to hash out some some terms.
Speaker 5: UH.
Speaker 4: Then on Monday, Israel submitted what it said was its
Speaker 4: counteroffer back to Hamas UH, saying that they were going
Speaker 4: to they would be flexible in the number of of
Speaker 4: hostages that they would take in the first phase. Uh that,
Speaker 4: and they would be they would be more willing to
Speaker 4: entertain Hamas's idea of what what Hamas is calling a
Speaker 4: sustainable calm, because Israel doesn't want to agree to a
Speaker 4: permanent ceasefire.
Speaker 3: So and Hamas is saying, they're.
Speaker 4: They'll only talk if there there is a something close
Speaker 4: to a permanent ceasefiren Yahoo's advisors have been telling him, look,
Speaker 4: because Nnya says, I don't want to agree to anything
Speaker 4: that ends the war, and they keep telling him, look,
Speaker 4: Hamas is going to do something. They'll shoot off a
Speaker 4: rocket or something. They'll they'll give you a pretense to
Speaker 4: start the war again. Just take the pause, take the
Speaker 4: hostages that that you can while the deal is on
Speaker 4: the table. Uhtyahu is not willing to go for that,
Speaker 4: because Hamas is also demanding that there'd be some type
Speaker 4: of plan for the day after that. They like, they
Speaker 4: genuine genuinely like they they they have been sending signals.
Speaker 4: They understand it's not going to be Hamas. It's going
Speaker 4: to be in control at the very end of this.
Speaker 4: But they also don't want to be the palace an
Speaker 4: authority so like, how are you going to organize this?
Speaker 4: And Hamas is saying they want Israel out of Rafa
Speaker 4: and off the Rafa crossing and the previous administration Hamas
Speaker 4: for now to be put back in charge of the
Speaker 4: Rafa crossing. And they've said, as that headline said, they're
Speaker 4: not negotiating until Israel ends its slaughter in Gaza and
Speaker 4: and withdraws its tanks and stops bombing like that, that's
Speaker 4: that's the precondition for negotiations to get going because and
Speaker 4: analysts are saying, well, because of the way that Israel
Speaker 4: is continuing to draw so much global condemnation for its actions,
Speaker 4: that Hamas is willing to let Israel continue down this
Speaker 4: path which is just hurt which is hurting them, hurting
Speaker 4: Palestinian civilians, also hurting Israel in the global stage.
Speaker 5: When in the peace process, if there's to be a
Speaker 5: resolution that's in the interest of the safety of israelis
Speaker 5: you know, we talked about this earlier, but that's what
Speaker 5: really I mean, at the end of the day, that's
Speaker 5: what Israel's interests are to its own civilians and their safety,
Speaker 5: and so it doesn't I mean, I'm pretty skeptical that
Speaker 5: the way this war is prosecuted is ultimately and even
Speaker 5: even in the interest of the Israeli the safety of
Speaker 5: Israeli citizens.
Speaker 4: And the Middle East side has some good sources inside
Speaker 4: the Middle East, as you can imagine, and they follow
Speaker 4: up on this reporting. If you didn't watch the show
Speaker 4: last week, what we were reporting on is the way
Speaker 4: that Hamas had accepted this deal, which Israel then said no,
Speaker 4: Hamas changed the terms of the deal, so we don't
Speaker 4: accept Hamas's acceptance of the deal. There was reporting that
Speaker 4: the US had signed off on what Hamas had agreed to,
Speaker 4: that Hamas believed that it was signing off on the
Speaker 4: actual offer. That was followed by blaming an individual member
Speaker 4: of Egyptian intelligence that they even named in CNN as
Speaker 4: responsible for tweaking the deal and blowing the whole thing up.
Speaker 3: According to the new reporting.
Speaker 4: That was just as and as we suggested last week
Speaker 4: that was just pure scapegoating, that everybody had actually signed
Speaker 4: off on it. But then Israel did not accept the
Speaker 4: kind of acceptance in response, as Middle East I writes.
Speaker 3: The source added that.
Speaker 4: Egypt was scapegoaded for a breakdown of talks even though
Speaker 4: the America had quote agreed to the two amendments by Hamas,
Speaker 4: and then because they were unable to oblige that Yahoo,
Speaker 4: they accused Egypt. So it's not that Israel had signed
Speaker 4: off on the two tweaks that Hamas made.
Speaker 3: It is that the US did.
Speaker 4: And Hamas understandably believes that if the US is good
Speaker 4: with it, the US can get Israel to go along
Speaker 4: with it. And it is a shameful dereliction of leadership
Speaker 4: on the part of Biden that the Director of the CIA,
Speaker 4: William Burns, can get to a peace deal with Hamas
Speaker 4: that he believes is acceptable to the United States, that
Speaker 4: is accepted in the United States, and they can't get Israel,
Speaker 4: country of like seven million people just dependent on American weapons,
Speaker 4: to accept the peace deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are you doing if you can't do that?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 5: What else?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: What else? Could? What else could they be doing?
Speaker 5: Poorly?
Speaker 6: It's a great question how much worse could they be
Speaker 6: at this?
Speaker 3: Good Lord?
Speaker 4: Yesterday's State Department briefing that was fascinating was the first
Speaker 4: This was their first briefing since the massacre in Rafa.
Speaker 3: But I want you to notice what they.
Speaker 4: Started out with, which is an indication of what they
Speaker 4: consider to be the thing that they care most about
Speaker 4: in the moment.
Speaker 9: I'm going to start with comments on a couple of
Speaker 9: things before going to your questions. First of aull Off
Speaker 9: as it relates to Georgia. Earlier today, the Georgian Parliament
Speaker 9: voted to override the Georgian President's veto of an anti
Speaker 9: democratic foreign influence bill that fails to conform to European norms,
Speaker 9: effectively turning the bill into law. The United States condemns
Speaker 9: this action. In passing this law, the ruling Georgian Dream
Speaker 9: Party moved the country farther away from the European integration
Speaker 9: path and ignored the euro Atlantic aspirations of the Georgian people,
Speaker 9: who have taken to the streets for weeks to oppose
Speaker 9: this law. The Georgian Dream has disregarded the Council of
Speaker 9: Europe's Venice Commission legal assessment and that of George's closest partners,
Speaker 9: who made clear their concerns that the law would stigmatize
Speaker 9: civil society and media and limit fundamental freedoms. The ruling
Speaker 9: party's actions and anti Western rhetoric threatened Georgia's democratic trajectory,
Speaker 9: future economic security, EU membership, and also put the US
Speaker 9: Georgia relationship at risk. Last week, Secretary Blincn announced that
Speaker 9: anyone who undermines democratic processes or institutions in Georgia, as
Speaker 9: well as their immediate family members, may be found ineligible
Speaker 9: for US visas under a newly announced policy precluding travel
Speaker 9: to the United States. The United States has also launched
Speaker 9: a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation between the United States
Speaker 9: and Georgia. As Secretary Blincoln said last week, we will
Speaker 9: take Georgia Dreams, Georgia Dreams actions into account as we
Speaker 9: decide our own. The United States continues to stand by
Speaker 9: the Georgian people as they work for a democratic and
Speaker 9: western future. It is unfortunate that George's leaders are choosing
Speaker 9: to forego the steps needed to advance Georgia in the
Speaker 9: western direction that its people want.
Speaker 4: Learning to Gaza, that is the State Department angry, and
Speaker 4: so let's let's unpack what that heck is going on here.
Speaker 4: So Georgia dream Is is a kind of hard to
Speaker 4: define political party, which is basically the governing governing party
Speaker 4: in Georgia. And they're harder to find because they were
Speaker 4: built in opposition to this neoliberal party. That that had
Speaker 4: been dominant in Georgia before, and so because they were
Speaker 4: kind of a popular front against a thing that brought
Speaker 4: together a bunch of disparate entities, sort of like the
Speaker 4: way that here on this network, we all hate neoliberalism.
Speaker 4: So imagine we put together a political party that was
Speaker 4: like me, Crystal, you and Sager because we hate the neoliberals,
Speaker 4: and we get them out of power. Then we've got
Speaker 4: the problem of we got to govern. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 4: gonna be some things we disagree on.
Speaker 6: What are we going to do about the pronouns.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we agreed that we did not like the Georgia neoliberals,
Speaker 4: but yes, now we got a government.
Speaker 3: So some of what.
Speaker 4: The Georgia Dream has done is really cool, like lots
Speaker 4: of social welfare stuff, universal health care, also some progressive
Speaker 4: social stuff, certainly relative to the area. At the same time,
Speaker 4: they've got some victor orban allied elements as well. There's
Speaker 4: some you know, some far right elements that are kind.
Speaker 6: Of saying they're pro women and family.
Speaker 3: There you go, but there, yeah, exactly, So they're hostile to.
Speaker 4: Hostile to neoliberalism from the far right, and so it's
Speaker 4: the power inside that coalition kind of seesaws. So setting
Speaker 4: that aside, all of those elements are ones that the
Speaker 4: State Department doesn't like. Separately, they're considered to be friendlier
Speaker 4: to Russia and relatedly than the Neoliberals were. The Neoliberals
Speaker 4: were very lockstep with the EU. It's not as if
Speaker 4: Georgia Georgia dream is like radically pro Russia. But for instance,
Speaker 4: when Russia invaded Ukraine, Georgia supported Ukraine. They said, we
Speaker 4: you know, we think this is appalling, but they refused
Speaker 4: to take part in the sanctions against Russia. They refused
Speaker 4: to arm Ukraine, and Ukraine kept pushing Georgia to quote
Speaker 4: unquote open up a second front against Russia because the
Speaker 4: Neoliberals when they were running Georgia lost South Ossetia and
Speaker 4: some other pieces of Georgia to Russia. If you remember
Speaker 4: that war fifteen years ago or whatever, and the world
Speaker 4: still says that's Georgian territory with Russians.
Speaker 3: Russians control it.
Speaker 4: So the arm was, hey, you know, pick a fight
Speaker 4: with Russia over on this border over here, you know,
Speaker 4: don't they deserve it. They stole your land, Like fight them,
Speaker 4: and that will also help Ukraine because now Russia will
Speaker 4: have to be fighting on multiple fronts. And the Georgi's
Speaker 4: Dream Party was like, no, like, we're not doing that
Speaker 4: like that. Yes, we understand that would help you, we
Speaker 4: understand that, we're mad that Russia did this to us,
Speaker 4: but we would get absolutely annihilated and it would destroy
Speaker 4: Georgia's so we're not no, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 4: That really ticked off the US, that ticked off the EU.
Speaker 4: They start riling up protests in the streets and so
Speaker 4: then they come forward, this actually breakaway kind of socialist
Speaker 4: faction of Georgia Dream comes forward with this plan that
Speaker 4: now the state departments really angry about, which is saying, look,
Speaker 4: if you get if you're an NGO or a media
Speaker 4: organization and you get more than twenty percent of your
Speaker 4: money from foreign sources, then you have to register basically
Speaker 4: as a foreign agent. Georgia legislator says, look, we're just
Speaker 4: modeling this after FARA, which the US has. We say no, no, no,
Speaker 4: you're modeling it after Russia's of course law, which Russia
Speaker 4: has used. Russia has genuinely used to crack down on dissent.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 4: Is the response from the State Department pretty wild like this.
Speaker 4: You say whatever you want about it. They're passing it
Speaker 4: democratically through their own legislature. And it's not a unless
Speaker 4: I'm missing something, it's not a terribly unreasonably even if
Speaker 4: it is aimed at, you know, cracking down on dissent
Speaker 4: from some organizations and media outlets that they don't like.
Speaker 4: It's kind of George's business if they want to do this,
Speaker 4: isn't it.
Speaker 5: But you see, Ryan, democracy is on the line around
Speaker 5: the world, which is actually what we're going to talk
Speaker 5: about in just a minute in the next block. And
Speaker 5: it's the Biden administration's line. I forget who who posted
Speaker 5: this recently. It's not a new line, but basically that
Speaker 5: every time they say democracy, what they really mean like
Speaker 5: substitute the word oligarchy when every time the sort of
Speaker 5: neoliberal leadership refers to the need to save democracy, just
Speaker 5: substitute aligarchy and everything they're saying makes way more sense.
Speaker 4: And there's oligarchs everywhere, because the Georgia dream is literally
Speaker 4: a product of an oligarch in Georgia, like a flat
Speaker 4: in one of these kind of flamboyant culture personality oligarch types.
Speaker 5: But they which is interesting because it's like this idea
Speaker 5: that we're going to fight.
Speaker 6: Oligarchy with oligki, right, So.
Speaker 5: Like if you want to make the argument that Donald
Speaker 5: Trump is an oligarch and then you're just like the
Speaker 5: party of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and like actual oligarchy.
Speaker 5: If your answer is to say, we are, so America
Speaker 5: needs to purge allarchy, oligarchy, we need to fight back
Speaker 5: against the blah blah blah, and your answers, Joe Biden
Speaker 5: and Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 6: Well done.
Speaker 4: And it was pretty incredible see them saying that they're
Speaker 4: going to take they're basically going to sanction like people
Speaker 4: involved with this going to.
Speaker 3: Strip their visas.
Speaker 4: After covering Pakistan, where Pakistan just completely changes the numbers
Speaker 4: of their election, right, like one party wins, the military
Speaker 4: goes in and literally changes the numbers so that a
Speaker 4: different party wins, and the State Department, you know, doesn't
Speaker 4: do anything remotely close to what they're doing here for
Speaker 4: a piece of legislation being passed through their kind of
Speaker 4: constitutional normal process, as the president, under pressure from the
Speaker 4: EU vetoed it, the legislature overrode the veto yesterday.
Speaker 3: That's you know, I mean, you don't like that, go
Speaker 3: out and I don't know.
Speaker 5: Pour some money into Georgian elections. The vote people are
Speaker 5: gonna have to register, but register and vote.
Speaker 3: If you don't, go vote in the Georgia elections if
Speaker 3: you like. It's just so weird.
Speaker 5: By the way, the way Farah works is such a
Speaker 5: good and we're gonna be talking about this kind of
Speaker 5: on the Friday Show, I assume. But it's such an
Speaker 5: example of American oligarchy, and the oligarchs like Tony Podesta
Speaker 5: just thought they didn't have to register. Well, they knew
Speaker 5: they didn't have to register until by some crazy circumstance,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, the host of Celebrity Apprentice, gets elected President.
Speaker 5: Paul mannifort goes to the chopping block, and this drags
Speaker 5: Tony Podesta into a scandal that ends the Potesta group.
Speaker 5: He's still lobbying, but really just never legister register as
Speaker 5: a lobbyist on behalf of Ukraine, even though you know
Speaker 5: there are people were talking to CNN at the time,
Speaker 5: being like he was obviously having these meetings on the
Speaker 5: Hill as a representative of Ukraine, not the shell organization
Speaker 5: he set up to disguise it. So Even if you
Speaker 5: have a democratically passed legislation like Farah that requires registration,
Speaker 5: oligarchs will still find a way to put holes in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just feels like a real who do we
Speaker 4: think we are kind of moment.
Speaker 3: I mean, Georgia should just do whatever Georgia wants to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's talk about Joe Biden. Let's talk about twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, Donald Trump. Actually, just a lot of updates
Speaker 5: from New York City yesterday, Ryan, there was so much
Speaker 5: stuff going on in the streets of New York. So
Speaker 5: we will start with this first. It's important. This is
Speaker 5: the This is c one. This is an article from
Speaker 5: Politico about how Democrats are in full blown quote freak
Speaker 5: out over Biden. Now, the subheat of the story is
Speaker 5: and also an interesting part of the school. It says
Speaker 5: one advisor to major Democratic donors keeps a running list
Speaker 5: of reasons Biden could lose.
Speaker 6: Someone pointing to an interesting fact.
Speaker 5: Out to me yesterday, which is that the debate on
Speaker 5: June twenty seventh is suspiciously early, meaning did Democrats want
Speaker 5: like a two month cushion if Biden absolutely bombs between
Speaker 5: then and the convention in Chicago In mid August. I
Speaker 5: think that's actually an interesting question. There are contingencies, contingency
Speaker 5: measures that could be put in place, although they're really
Speaker 5: really difficult, and there's no consensus candidate other than their
Speaker 5: fantasy of Michelle Obama that they could replace Joe Biden with.
Speaker 5: At this point, Kamala Harris's favorability is not great. I
Speaker 5: know a lot of people want to Gretchen Whitmer or
Speaker 5: maybe even Gavin Newsome. It's unclear if those are answers
Speaker 5: to the problem, because it seems right now at least
Speaker 5: like it would just be a very difficult replacement effort,
Speaker 5: although it is possible. There's like some Charlie Kelly math
Speaker 5: that you can do on a talk board to figure
Speaker 5: it out.
Speaker 4: Any thing is if they would listen to me, not
Speaker 4: that they ever would, I could end this problem for
Speaker 4: them immediately. And with Biden still as president, you make
Speaker 4: Obama his vice president. People still love Obama, they absolutely
Speaker 4: love him. The constitution says that you can't serve more
Speaker 4: than ten years and you cannot be elected more than twice.
Speaker 4: He is eligible to be elected as vice president. If
Speaker 4: Biden died, he would be eligible to elevate from vice
Speaker 4: president to president.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, go google the Constitution, read it yourself.
Speaker 5: Google the Constitution, It's right in there.
Speaker 3: He could do it. He would then have to resign
Speaker 3: within two years.
Speaker 4: So let's say, you know, Biden dies in like March
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty five, then Obama could only serve until
Speaker 4: March of twenty twenty seven. So then whoever he would
Speaker 4: name a vice president, just like Nixon named Ford as
Speaker 4: his vice president, and then Obama would have to resign
Speaker 4: within two years, and then that person would become the
Speaker 4: president for the rest.
Speaker 3: Of the term. I think if you had Obama as
Speaker 3: Biden's VP.
Speaker 4: That people be like, you know what, okay, Like tons
Speaker 4: of Democrats really I like, we know him.
Speaker 3: And then you've got the nostalgia voters who were like
Speaker 3: things were good then and things were good Trump.
Speaker 5: This is a good example of why I think there's
Speaker 5: intentionally a two month cushion, because there are all kinds
Speaker 5: of solutions like this that people can get on board with. Now,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't be so worried about Biden's performance at the
Speaker 5: debate because whatever they do to Joe Biden drug, whatever
Speaker 5: they do before those debates, seems to work. Like he's
Speaker 5: good for an hour and a half and then it
Speaker 5: starts to go downhill. But I wouldn't be too worried
Speaker 5: about the debate in particular. It'd be much more worried.
Speaker 4: Bama just showed up instead, just like I'm pinch hitting.
Speaker 5: Yeah. But I would be much more worried about the
Speaker 5: campaign strategy, which is has been I think clearly focused
Speaker 5: on the question. We were just discussing democracy, civility norms,
Speaker 5: all on the line, very very similar to the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty campaign. This is what was on full display yesterday
Speaker 5: in New York. So while Democratic insiders are freaking out
Speaker 5: in quote freak out mode to Politico. So these are
Speaker 5: people that probably aren't running the day to day campaign,
Speaker 5: but presumably are big donors, are strategists. While they're talking
Speaker 5: to Politico, here's what the Biden campaign was doing yesterday.
Speaker 5: The Biden campaign, not some pack or not some special
Speaker 5: interest group, not a media thing.
Speaker 6: This was the Biden campaign.
Speaker 5: They actually put Robert de Niro out in This was
Speaker 5: timed with Donald Trump's trial and the hush money case
Speaker 5: with Harry Dunn and I think Michael fanone to January.
Speaker 5: Six Capitol police officers who've been high profile opponents of
Speaker 5: Trump since January sixth, Robert de Niro, take a look
Speaker 5: at some of these clips from Manhattan yesterday.
Speaker 13: The city is pretty accommodating. We make room for clouds.
Speaker 13: We have them all over the city. People who do
Speaker 13: crazy things in the street we tolerated. It's part of
Speaker 13: the city. It's part of the culture. But not a
Speaker 13: person like Trump who will eventually run the country. That
Speaker 13: does not work. And we all know that. Anyway, we
Speaker 13: make group of clowns to each his own, but no
Speaker 13: one takes him or took them really seriously. They take
Speaker 13: them seriously. Now, of course democratic you are, you are,
Speaker 13: you're talking.
Speaker 6: There are nobody.
Speaker 11: Your movie suck.
Speaker 5: You're trash, You're trash, You're done.
Speaker 13: You're so right.
Speaker 5: This was just a peak New York you and Roberts
Speaker 5: and you were talking about how great New York is
Speaker 5: because we have clowns in the street. As those clowns
Speaker 5: in the street, all due respect, are shouting at him,
Speaker 5: and like in the background of the first clip that
Speaker 5: was a little bit more quiet, there were still people
Speaker 5: shouting at him.
Speaker 6: And in the second clip, he was being.
Speaker 5: Escorted away from a mob and the guy in a
Speaker 5: maga hat saying you're nobody. Your movies are trash, like
Speaker 5: just classic behavior.
Speaker 3: The hate his politics. Movies are great.
Speaker 6: Well, it spends on which movies you're talking about. Some
Speaker 6: of the movies are trash.
Speaker 3: Do enough movies. I guess some are going to be trash.
Speaker 5: Well, actually, this particular Trump voter might want to take
Speaker 5: another look at Taxi.
Speaker 9: There you go.
Speaker 5: It was just a perfect New York scene. But I
Speaker 5: think also Ryan just this strategy we have seen since
Speaker 5: literally twenty sixteen of taking celebrities out to talk about
Speaker 5: how horrible Donald Trump is. And this was outside the trial,
Speaker 5: which Joe Biden is he again, this was leaked to media.
Speaker 5: He's ready, he's prepared to address it at the White
Speaker 5: House so that whatever the verdict is, he will finally
Speaker 5: address this trial when the verdict comes out out whatever
Speaker 5: it is, but he's going to do it from the
Speaker 5: White House so that it doesn't look political. That's an
Speaker 5: actual contention.
Speaker 3: As opposed to a rally, like, yes, does he do rallies?
Speaker 5: I mean he's I think he's in campaign in Philadelphia
Speaker 5: something like that. But because again the verdict could come
Speaker 5: at any moment, the jury is quite literally out today,
Speaker 5: So we could have a verdict in you know, it
Speaker 5: could be days, could be today. I suspect it will
Speaker 5: probably take a little bit of time.
Speaker 3: But uh, they got to thirty four votes, right, thirty
Speaker 3: four charges?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so yeah, it could take a while. So
Speaker 5: the Biden administration is saying, you know, we don't we
Speaker 5: don't see this as political.
Speaker 6: This is just about democracy and decency.
Speaker 5: And then they're trying out Robert de Niro in the
Speaker 5: streets of New York, like outside the courthouse where we
Speaker 5: saw all kinds of Republicans doing the political speeches last
Speaker 5: week too. It just, you know, I think their campaign
Speaker 5: strategy really sucks, to be honest, but there's an argument
Speaker 5: that it could. You know, it's the thing that gets
Speaker 5: the suburban housewives to turn out. I don't know if
Speaker 5: Robert Niro is the answer to that, but.
Speaker 4: One of the top quotes from that political article was quote,
Speaker 4: you don't want to be that guy who is on
Speaker 4: the record saying we're doomed where the campaign's bad or
Speaker 4: Biden's making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy, said
Speaker 4: a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House
Speaker 4: and granted anonymy to speak freely, but Biden's stubbornly Portpoli
Speaker 4: and the stakes of the election quote are creating the.
Speaker 3: Freakout, he said, yep.
Speaker 4: So I mean it's a bunch of quotes like that
Speaker 4: from people who are freaking out. But it's hard to
Speaker 4: take the freaking out seriously when all of these people
Speaker 4: had a year plus to publicly freak out and then
Speaker 4: actually change the reality and have an actual open primary
Speaker 4: by putting pressure on Biden to not run for election,
Speaker 4: but none of them wanted to do so because all
Speaker 4: of them would pay some little tiny cost, So collectively
Speaker 4: they all just decided to let the party make a
Speaker 4: catastrophic decision with according to them, the fate of the
Speaker 4: free world yes at stake.
Speaker 3: And so it's hard.
Speaker 4: To take them seriously when they say that they really
Speaker 4: believe the fate of the free world is at stake
Speaker 4: if you're not willing to take a little tiny risk
Speaker 4: yeah to defend it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And especially, I mean it really does ring hollow
Speaker 5: when you have a Hollywood multi millionaire actor being trotted
Speaker 5: out in New York outside at courthouse for a case
Speaker 5: that is not political but about democracy and decency, and
Speaker 5: yet there's an extremely strong argument, even from people on
Speaker 5: the left, that is a trumped up political case that
Speaker 5: Alvin Bragg did some intended to do, some intended to do,
Speaker 5: some novel legal maneuvering to make it a felony and
Speaker 5: a campaign finance violation because the statute of limitations had
Speaker 5: elapsed on the financial Like the what's the best way
Speaker 5: to describe the crime that's alleged to have.
Speaker 3: Been the sanctity of business records must be upheld?
Speaker 5: Yeah, in New York. Yes, the sanctity of business records
Speaker 5: must be upell in New York, which, by the way,
Speaker 5: I'm on board with if it's going to be a
Speaker 5: blied and a truly non oligarchical partisan manner. But when
Speaker 5: you have Robert de Niro and you're in your strategy
Speaker 5: is bringing out Harry Dunn, who just lost in Robert
Speaker 5: de Niro to talk about this outside of courtroom while
Speaker 5: you are pretending to take the high road. It's a
Speaker 5: ridiculous strategy, I think. And it's approaching ten years of
Speaker 5: Democrats talking about nothing serious to voters. I mean, obviously
Speaker 5: they do sometimes I'm speaking in somewhat hyperbole here, but
Speaker 5: it's like ten years of Democrats fixating on these ridiculous
Speaker 5: arguments against Donald Trump himself instead of policies, and there
Speaker 5: are problems, like there are actual substance of problems with
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. I get it. With the style of somebody
Speaker 5: who's tweeting about Mika Brazinski's facelift as president, I get it.
Speaker 5: I think there are substance of questions about the style.
Speaker 5: But it's been their fixation for approaching a decade, and
Speaker 5: it's clearly a crutch. It's clearly become a crutch for
Speaker 5: Democrats because they're uncertain of how to win the argument.
Speaker 5: They're unwilling to I think even try to win the
Speaker 5: argument with some of those Obama Trump voters in the
Speaker 5: rust belt, even you know, black voters who are moving
Speaker 5: towards Trump, not just away from Biden, but towards Trump,
Speaker 5: and not an overwhelming numbers, but in historic numbers according
Speaker 5: to some polling. It's much easier for Democrats to try
Speaker 5: to just turn out with educated, suburban voters through stuff
Speaker 5: like this instead of, you know, trying to win on
Speaker 5: the merits of policy stubsms for people who feel like
Speaker 5: this economy sucks for them.
Speaker 4: And I still think Trump could lose, Oh absolutely, The
Speaker 4: part I can't quite figure out, and maybe you can
Speaker 4: help me with this is how so the end of
Speaker 4: democracy argument would require Trump to then get a third term.
Speaker 3: Right, In order for Trump to get a third term, he.
Speaker 4: Would need either the support of the Supreme Court to
Speaker 4: do that or the military.
Speaker 3: I understand.
Speaker 4: I guess why Democrats think the Supreme Court would support
Speaker 4: him in that, because he appointed a bunch of them
Speaker 4: and it's a right wing Supreme Court. But a closer
Speaker 4: understanding of this Supreme Court does not have them in this.
Speaker 4: They haven't been coalition together, but not not in a
Speaker 4: sense that they want Trump to kind of be some
Speaker 4: permanent dictator like John Roberts would prefer the Reagan era
Speaker 4: type of republican Mitt Romneyer.
Speaker 5: The same with somebody Neil Gorsich, same with any Amy Coney, Barrett.
Speaker 5: And you can maybe make an argument about Alito and Thomas,
Speaker 5: but the others.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think Alito and Thomas would be there
Speaker 4: for the revolution perhaps, but that's that's two votes.
Speaker 6: Perhaps.
Speaker 3: I think you, I think you would.
Speaker 4: You can legitimately worry about them absolutely from the left, Yeah,
Speaker 4: definitely the military though, Okay, that's a very pro democracy.
Speaker 5: Institution, very anti Trump institute, very.
Speaker 4: Anti Trump institution, very pro civilian control of the government institution.
Speaker 4: And I don't think enough people there aren't enough like
Speaker 4: sergeants that you could make four star generals to take
Speaker 4: over the military in four years, Senate, it's not going to.
Speaker 3: Let you do that. I don't. I just don't. I
Speaker 3: don't see the path.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the freak out over American institutions somehow
Speaker 5: being easily swayed by Donald Trump is absurd because, if anything,
Speaker 5: our institutions have hardened themselves against Donald Trump. Even if
Speaker 5: the Pentagon, for example, supported Trump era policies that felt
Speaker 5: very neo conservative to some people because John Bolton's of
Speaker 5: the world in his administration. Even then, the style substance
Speaker 5: of Donald Trump is abhorrent to a lot of top
Speaker 5: brass and the military, and over at the.
Speaker 4: Pendentmon I don't think there's enough time to get rid
Speaker 4: of all that top brass and put in because the
Speaker 4: path to that type of dominance would be replacing the
Speaker 4: entire leadership of the DOJ and the military with nothing
Speaker 4: but Trump loyalists.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not something you can do with schedule a foot.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll try to get rid of that.
Speaker 4: But like, but even that's I just think physically, they
Speaker 4: don't they don't have the they don't have the bodies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and maybe.
Speaker 4: I'm wrong, Maybe Democrats will have the last will laugh
Speaker 4: when I'm up against the wall.
Speaker 3: After Trump's revolution, We'll see.
Speaker 5: That was a really dark turn. All right, Let's move
Speaker 5: on to some news actually out of Harvard that we
Speaker 5: wanted to pair with the interview Barry Weiss conducted with
Speaker 5: Jerry Seinfeld over at the Free Press yesterday. So just
Speaker 5: to contextualize this, we're going to be talking about Harvard
Speaker 5: starting to say we are going to have a policy
Speaker 5: of institutional neutrality along the lines of, you know, something
Speaker 5: like the University of Chicago. Although important observers or observers
Speaker 5: have pointed out something important, which is that we don't
Speaker 5: know how Harvard will interpret this yet. But obviously Harvard
Speaker 5: has been reeling since the Claudine Gates has the morning
Speaker 5: after October seventh, then the encampment, and it's been.
Speaker 6: A hell of a year for Harvard.
Speaker 5: Now, in his interview with Barry Weiss, Jerry Seinfeld, who
Speaker 5: just gave a majorly viral commencement address at Duke University
Speaker 5: addressed some of what he sees among young people.
Speaker 10: Let's roll this clip, and so you yourself have become
Speaker 10: politicized in a way.
Speaker 5: A little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you feel that?
Speaker 5: I do you comfortable with it?
Speaker 3: It's so dumb. It's so dumb.
Speaker 14: In fact, when we get protesters occasionally, I love to
Speaker 14: say to the audience, you know, I love that these
Speaker 14: young people, they are trying to get engaged with politics.
Speaker 14: We have to just correct their aim a little bit.
Speaker 14: You know, they don't seem to be understand that as
Speaker 14: comedians we really.
Speaker 3: Don't control anything, right, right, right, No one's really uh no,
Speaker 3: you're pulling.
Speaker 10: The strings over the war in Gosnel. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 10: I think of it. Yeah, yeah, you were in Israel. Yeah,
Speaker 10: since the war started.
Speaker 5: How is that.
Speaker 14: Trip the most powerful experience of my life?
Speaker 6: Really?
Speaker 3: I'm sure? Yeah? Why you know it? Just yeah?
Speaker 4: That clip was shared by Israel's official Twitter account. Yes,
Speaker 4: and then the conversation went on from there. We could
Speaker 4: roll this next clip from it.
Speaker 10: A huge part of the way you think about comedy
Speaker 10: is how the audience never lies, m right, But what
Speaker 10: happens if a lot of people are wrong? In other words,
Speaker 10: there is a I don't think Jews do well in
Speaker 10: an age of mobs, and I feel that right now
Speaker 10: in our culture, it's really easy to form mobs.
Speaker 3: Yes, really easy.
Speaker 10: And what's the difference between the audience never lying? But
Speaker 10: when does the audience kind of tip into the mob?
Speaker 10: Do you see where I'm going with them?
Speaker 6: I do?
Speaker 3: I do? There's something they Yeah.
Speaker 10: But I really have been wanting to ask you about,
Speaker 10: Like for someone that relies on the truth telling of
Speaker 10: the audience to tell you whether or not something is funny?
Speaker 5: Hm?
Speaker 10: What does that same principle apply to a massive people?
Speaker 6: Do you see what I mean?
Speaker 14: Hm? Well, you can't act like we don't see this
Speaker 14: every day in many realms. Let's just talk politically, left
Speaker 14: and right. You're watching mobs, their mobs, their mobs, believing
Speaker 14: their own crap. Right, Yeah, that's what a political party is.
Speaker 14: We're going to make up a bunch of nonsense and
Speaker 14: we'll all agree to it, right right, Okay, let's print
Speaker 14: up some bumper stickers and get out there, kids.
Speaker 3: That's politics.
Speaker 14: So we're tribal animals, we're social creatures. We look for
Speaker 14: agreement and consensus. We're driven by agreement and consensus and
Speaker 14: mob rule gives us comfort, gives us certainty. It's all bs.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 5: I can actually say to the point about Seinfeld explaining
Speaker 5: that his trip to his October seventh was the most
Speaker 5: powerful experience of his life, I can imagine that's true
Speaker 5: basically no matter who you are. I mean humanitarian tragedy,
Speaker 5: catastrophe that unfolded after October seventh. Your point about Israel
Speaker 5: sharing the clip, the Israeli government sharing the clip on
Speaker 5: X I think is really interesting as well. But you know,
Speaker 5: the second part of that is what you added that
Speaker 5: to the show. You wanted to hear what he said
Speaker 5: about mob rule. There was a walkout in his speech
Speaker 5: at Duke actually people just walked out of it, which
Speaker 5: it seemed like he was alluding to what stood out
Speaker 5: to you in that argument about mobral And.
Speaker 4: My view on the whole Seinfeld thing was that I
Speaker 4: think it was like, so the reason that the propile
Speaker 4: sign protests started going after Seinfeld is that his his
Speaker 4: well a, he was kind of outspoken in supportive of
Speaker 4: the Israeli war effort, but also his wife was directly
Speaker 4: funding the count the campus counter protests, and those counter
Speaker 4: protests like actually genuinely got violent and weren't quite vile
Speaker 4: in their kind of Islamophobic rhetoric and sometimes anti Semitic rhetoric,
Speaker 4: so to protest against like you know, you're putting yourself
Speaker 4: in the arena if you're financing counter protests, and yes,
Speaker 4: but my view on it was people as a billionaire,
Speaker 4: yeah the way, I'm sure, yeah, she's got that Seinfeld money, yep.
Speaker 3: But my view of it.
Speaker 4: Was people don't really know that, and they're just going
Speaker 4: to think you're just protesting Seinfel because he's Jewish, which
Speaker 4: isn't what you know, isn't what people were doing. Because
Speaker 4: they had this organized a specific reason for it, I
Speaker 4: was gonna, I thought, would blow up in their.
Speaker 3: Face if they if they went forward with it.
Speaker 4: And then I thought it was interesting to hear kind
Speaker 4: of Seinfeld's own kind of political analysis, just to show
Speaker 4: how vacuous it is, like to say that that all
Speaker 4: political parties and political formations are just mere tribal associations
Speaker 4: of people organizing together just to make themselves feel good
Speaker 4: and and get that sense of come camaraderie ignores everything
Speaker 4: we don't know about, like political movements and political parties,
Speaker 4: like there are actual agendas and there are things that
Speaker 4: people are fighting for materially, spear virtually, and so to
Speaker 4: like ignore that just shows like it kind of makes
Speaker 4: his point in some ways that that he really is
Speaker 4: not anybody who's like really deeply, you know, thought about
Speaker 4: politics ever, so it's like, yeah, he is kind of
Speaker 4: he but so many comedians, of course, are very political.
Speaker 3: Comedy is very often political.
Speaker 4: Yes, if there's any comedian who's been a political it
Speaker 4: has been Seinfeld, you know, just talking about you know,
Speaker 4: how but not so much just how it sucks to
Speaker 4: like fly on airplanes.
Speaker 5: It's not so much a political is transpolitical and that
Speaker 5: it's it's transpartisan, I guess, you know, it's It sort
Speaker 5: of reminds me of the Johnny Carson approach, which was
Speaker 5: really popular in the era of mass media. Like that's
Speaker 5: the example when I talk to students about this that
Speaker 5: I always use is like Johnny Carson was constantly political,
Speaker 5: just it wasn't partisan humor wasn't like Stephen Colbert, who
Speaker 5: is now the number one host in late like in
Speaker 5: the Johnny Carson slot. Because we're not in the era
Speaker 5: of mass media anymore. And I feel like Seinfeld is
Speaker 5: really struggling with that the new reality that people in
Speaker 5: these niches, you know, maybe they represent twenty or thirty
Speaker 5: percent of the country now have abolish a lot of
Speaker 5: gatekeeping and are ascendant. And you know, when people walk
Speaker 5: out of his Duke commencement speech, that gets a lot
Speaker 5: of headlines because a lot of the gatekeepers are gone,
Speaker 5: and new media can write about it. We can talk
Speaker 5: about it here, and I think that's a It's a
Speaker 5: really new world for him. In fact, he said in
Speaker 5: the Duke speech, the slightly uncomfortable feeling of awkward humor
Speaker 5: is okay, It's not something you need to fix. I
Speaker 5: totally admire the ambitions of your generation and create a
Speaker 5: more just and inclusive society. I think it's also wonderful
Speaker 5: that you care so much about not hurting other people's
Speaker 5: feelings and the million in one ways, we all do
Speaker 5: that every second of every day. It's lovely to want
Speaker 5: to fix those things. But all caps. But what I
Speaker 5: need to tell you as a comedian, do not lose
Speaker 5: your sense of humor. You have no idea at this
Speaker 5: point in your life how much you're going to need
Speaker 5: it to get through. Not enough of life makes sense
Speaker 5: for you to be able to survive it without humor.
Speaker 5: I think you and I both agree with those sentiments exactly,
Speaker 5: but it's it's not arguing against the point that his
Speaker 5: opponents are making, which is that there's there's just nothing
Speaker 5: funny about like that was The way they're arguing is
Speaker 5: they're talking about genocide and they walked out of a
Speaker 5: speech because of genocide. They opposed the speech because of
Speaker 5: what they see as genocide, and so coming back at
Speaker 5: that by saying, ay, just let your hair down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I don't even I don't really even think
Speaker 4: his show was transpartisan in the sense that he take
Speaker 4: him out his word, like he was saying it was
Speaker 4: a show about nothing, and in the nineties, the country
Speaker 4: really was ready for a show about nothing.
Speaker 6: But he didn't.
Speaker 5: There was political He would make jokes about political things.
Speaker 5: It wasn't in your face, but like there were jokes
Speaker 5: about history and politics, and they would you.
Speaker 4: Know they were I guess. But it's just completely shorn
Speaker 4: of any meaning whatsoever.
Speaker 6: Yeh, that's absolutely true. And I think that's what's.
Speaker 4: Interesting as Larry David has continued the theme of like
Speaker 4: just a completely trivial show, but he dives into political issues. Yes,
Speaker 4: because he I think because you have to now because
Speaker 4: of the polarized political climate we're in, and Seinfeld is
Speaker 4: on this belated kind of anti woke.
Speaker 5: Theme now, although he was there early, like I think
Speaker 5: in twenty fifteen sixteen he came out and said, I'm
Speaker 5: not doing campuses anymore, and it was like Seinfeld and
Speaker 5: Chris Rocks.
Speaker 3: That Seinfeld was getting cancer. Like what was Seinfeld saying?
Speaker 6: I think he was saying people didn't have a good
Speaker 6: sense of humor.
Speaker 5: So I feel like he's been on that, but he's
Speaker 5: not realizing that.
Speaker 6: Maybe they do have a sense of humor.
Speaker 5: I mean, I could probably there are some people I
Speaker 5: think probably do need a sense of humor, but it's
Speaker 5: just a better sense of humor. But it's just that
Speaker 5: the things that he wants to talk about, people aren't
Speaker 5: seeing the humor in those particular.
Speaker 4: His post Seinfeld stand up was like, I'm not saying
Speaker 4: anything controversially, it just hasn't been that good. It's not
Speaker 4: like he hasn't been that like great, and it's made
Speaker 4: a lot of people say, wait a minute, was it
Speaker 4: really Larry David the whole time that was the genius
Speaker 4: behind that show the whole.
Speaker 5: Time You know, I've never been a huge Seinfeld person.
Speaker 5: I love Curb, never been a huge Seinfold person, But
Speaker 5: I think you can He's obviously very smart, and I
Speaker 5: think I agree with you that.
Speaker 3: I don't thing's thought through some of this stuff.
Speaker 5: But yeah, maybe where we agree on this is that
Speaker 5: he's I really think he's struggling to deal with the
Speaker 5: new reality of the country, Like it's not the country
Speaker 5: of the nineteen nineties when his show was like extraordinarily
Speaker 5: popular and Seinfeld is still popular. Barry made that point
Speaker 5: in the Free Press post, it's so extremely popular, but
Speaker 5: that doesn't you know, we're so nichefied that it's not
Speaker 5: the same thing as people all sitting down at nine
Speaker 5: pm and tuning into Seinfeld and talking about it at
Speaker 5: the water coil the next day. He really has to
Speaker 5: grapple with the lack of gap of gatekeeping and what
Speaker 5: that means for a culture that's going in a million
Speaker 5: different directions.
Speaker 6: It's not like, hey, we can all have a.
Speaker 5: Good laugh about this, you know, joke in regard to silly,
Speaker 5: crazy conservatives. It's more like, hmm, people are on wildly
Speaker 5: different pages.
Speaker 3: And he's got a grapple with not having Larry David, that's.
Speaker 5: Probably the real handicap that's really struggling. Yeah, probably the
Speaker 5: real handicap there. All right, let's move on to Argentina,
Speaker 5: where I sent this to our producers earlier, where you
Speaker 5: had Hoavier. A headline from Bloomberg April twenty fifth, twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, Javier Melee fuels wild rally that makes payso
Speaker 5: number one in world, with a headline recently from the
Speaker 5: Financial Times. Just in the last week, Argentina's Payso plunges
Speaker 5: in warning light for Melay. We could put the first
Speaker 5: element up on the screen here. Question, Ryan is what's
Speaker 5: closer to the truth. So Melee actually swapped a cabinet
Speaker 5: chief in what Reuters referred to as a major government
Speaker 5: shake up. There's sort of a wild ride done in
Speaker 5: Argentina right now. He's been covorting with Sam Altman and
Speaker 5: talking about the importance of artificial intelligence. And if you
Speaker 5: take Mela at his word, he will say, and any
Speaker 5: libertarian engaged in an experiment like this, a lab experiment
Speaker 5: like this sort of trying to come back from Peronism,
Speaker 5: as he says, would say that it's going to You're
Speaker 5: going to have your ups and downs. You know, necessarily
Speaker 5: you're going to hit some obstacles just when you're doing
Speaker 5: things like trying to fix an economy that was stagnant,
Speaker 5: if not.
Speaker 6: Worse, for years and years and years. So what do
Speaker 6: you think is closer to the truth on this Ryan?
Speaker 5: Is this an amazing recovery or is this the peso
Speaker 5: plunging and Melay being thrust into chaos in his own cabinet.
Speaker 3: I mean, Argentina is like a giant mess. It's fun.
Speaker 4: It's maybe we can have fun at Mela's expense, you know,
Speaker 4: through three inflation.
Speaker 6: And that's not his fault.
Speaker 3: The country is.
Speaker 4: The country's political structures make it almost ungovernable. Like you,
Speaker 4: it's it's very hard for anybody to get elected in
Speaker 4: Argentina and then actually implement an agenda because of the
Speaker 4: way that different power centers are able to stop anything
Speaker 4: from happening. And I think one reason Argentine voters elected
Speaker 4: him is because they thought, well, maybe maybe this will
Speaker 4: shake like they didn't necessarily think he was the answer,
Speaker 4: but it was like a Trump light ninety three kind
Speaker 4: of thing where it's like, maybe this will shake things
Speaker 4: up so much that something something has to give.
Speaker 3: And so you can put up this first vo here.
Speaker 4: Basically, now he's trying to slash university university spending is
Speaker 4: what's going on. So in three hundred percent inflation, he's
Speaker 4: trying to hold university subsidies.
Speaker 5: Flat, and he has slash a lot of the governments
Speaker 5: already the first five months here, So that means.
Speaker 4: You're facing what a you know, three hundred percent cut
Speaker 4: basically because because now you know, it costs three times
Speaker 4: as much as it used to, and you're getting just
Speaker 4: the same kind of subsidy towards it as you were
Speaker 4: getting before. His his argument is that this would bring
Speaker 4: inflation finally under control. You know clearly that markets don't
Speaker 4: necessarily agree with that. The police are now joining in
Speaker 4: with the student protesters. The universities said that eight hundred
Speaker 4: thousand people were in the streets protesting. Mele said it
Speaker 4: was one hundred and fifty thousand people of people either way, right,
Speaker 4: And so yeah, they're just kind of locked in the standoff.
Speaker 4: We knew would be coming, and we also know where
Speaker 4: this heads is towards violence. And so the question then becomes,
Speaker 4: do the police do the libertarians bidding and crack down
Speaker 4: on these protests? Or did the police end up siding
Speaker 4: with the protesters, and then you're kind of back to
Speaker 4: square one of people being able to protect some of
Speaker 4: the subsidies that they have, but not being able to
Speaker 4: then actually enact anything rational more broadly.
Speaker 6: Well, and on the other side of this, the argument.
Speaker 5: Is going to be that his big reforms that you're
Speaker 5: just talking about are stalled and that could potentially be
Speaker 5: affecting the market. I'm sure that is affecting the market,
Speaker 5: that his package that he wants to get through to
Speaker 5: address this nearly three hundred percent inflation has been stalled,
Speaker 5: and you know, maybe that's why his cabinet chief is
Speaker 5: being switched up again within the first five months here.
Speaker 5: So I mean, I do genuinely think that it's hard
Speaker 5: to judge what happens under me Lea by the first
Speaker 5: five months here based on if you're comparing it to
Speaker 5: what his claimed vision is. It just you don't really know.
Speaker 5: Unless the economic reform package he can take all of
Speaker 5: the things that he can do by himself as an executive,
Speaker 5: and if he doesn't have them passed through Congress, if
Speaker 5: he doesn't have additional things passed through Congress, you know,
Speaker 5: then you're just bandaiating things in an effort to bring
Speaker 5: down three hundred percent inflation and potentially hurting people along
Speaker 5: the way. Now, if his economic reforms go through and
Speaker 5: you see an adaptation in the private sector, all of
Speaker 5: this is like really wishful thinking on behalf of libertarians.
Speaker 6: And you, I mean, you.
Speaker 5: Still have fairly sophisticated economists and disagreement about the effect
Speaker 5: of the Reagan tax cuts and versus defense spending and
Speaker 5: all of that. And we can get into those arguments
Speaker 5: about you know, Liz Trust and all of that good
Speaker 5: stuff about whether true libertarianism has ever been tried. You know,
Speaker 5: My particular opinion on that as a conservative is that
Speaker 5: these true libertarian experiments really I never work in the
Speaker 5: real world because you're not in a sort of perfect
Speaker 5: Petrie dish environment where there's a way to say, yeah,
Speaker 5: we'll just slash the government and things will be great.
Speaker 6: It'll bring inflation down.
Speaker 5: But it seems possible to me that a course correction
Speaker 5: could be in a good direction when all is sudden done.
Speaker 5: But I don't know that that's what we're seeing actually
Speaker 5: play out, although I would say that from my perspective
Speaker 5: at least, it's too early to have a conclusion on
Speaker 5: what will happen.
Speaker 3: I think you put up the third element, this article
Speaker 3: from Reuter's.
Speaker 4: You know, economic activity down eight point four percent year
Speaker 4: over year in March, and if you dig into it,
Speaker 4: the biggest collapse was in construction, a thirty percent decline
Speaker 4: in economic activity. And so that's not inflation, that's thirty
Speaker 4: percent less construction getting going.
Speaker 5: Although Mela retweeted someone who said everything within expectations that
Speaker 5: about these numbers, he said everything within expectations after a
Speaker 5: strong initial devaluation. So again, this idea that we're on
Speaker 5: the it's almost like a material dialectical materialism like Gailia
Speaker 5: and like we're on the plan is preceding a pace.
Speaker 4: There you go, and it's manufacturing down twenty percent. Argentina's
Speaker 4: a mess. But he's a rock star, right, so yeah,
Speaker 4: you gotta check this. The real reason we wanted to
Speaker 4: cover this is so that we could play this clip
Speaker 4: of the president Milaie up on stage.
Speaker 6: Incredible passage. There you go, leaving it all on the field.
Speaker 3: There you go more do you want?
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, while we're on international topics, let's talk about
Speaker 5: Julian Assange, because Donald Trump here at home, actually on
Speaker 5: the sidelines, actually speaking of libertarians, on the sidelines of
Speaker 5: the Libertarian Party convention this last weekend here in Washington,
Speaker 5: d C. Dave Smith talked a little bit about it
Speaker 5: on Breaking Points yesterday, but on the sidelines, Tim Poole
Speaker 5: interviewed Donald Trump and asked him about Julian Assange. Now,
Speaker 5: viewers will remember we had Gabriel Shipton, Julian Nosange's brother,
Speaker 5: on the show last week, and he fleshed out a
Speaker 5: bit about how the Assange case is becoming a real
Speaker 5: wedge issue in geopolitical negotiations between the United States and Australia,
Speaker 5: which an important alliance if the US is to be
Speaker 5: worried about Taiwan and what people see is the China threat.
Speaker 5: So all that is to say, Donald Trump's comments to
Speaker 5: Tim Poole are pretty interesting and I think of some serious,
Speaker 5: some real consequence. Here's what Donald Trump told Tim Poole
Speaker 5: about whether or not he would pardon Julian Nossange. Will
Speaker 5: you pardon Julian Nosange.
Speaker 15: Well, I'm going to talk about that today and we're
Speaker 15: going to give it very serious consideration, and we're going
Speaker 15: to have a couple of other things to say in
Speaker 15: this speech that I think you're going to love.
Speaker 5: I've heard some rumors and you've gotten so much out
Speaker 5: of me.
Speaker 6: I should leave a little bit for the speech.
Speaker 5: Don't you get that, mister President, is an honor and
Speaker 5: a privilege.
Speaker 3: I do appreciate you saying you're I have to.
Speaker 15: Say when I I did a little research. Yeah, some
Speaker 15: of my guys said that I met you before, but
Speaker 15: they said, just a very respected catch, my honor.
Speaker 5: Temple also related to Donald Trump that he recently said
Speaker 5: he had a nice face, that Tempoole has a nice Yeah.
Speaker 5: Then he said that Temple, Donald Trump said that to
Speaker 5: Tempole that he is a nice face.
Speaker 3: Does he have a nice face?
Speaker 6: I think all faces are nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There you go, now to unpack Trump's thoughts on a
Speaker 4: sound and also Edward Snowden. He was asked about this
Speaker 4: also by Cannis Owens, and see if you can almost
Speaker 4: kind of see the trembling in his voice as he
Speaker 4: talks about.
Speaker 3: This, like it's like the deep State is really in
Speaker 3: his head.
Speaker 4: But here's Jared, here's the here's this back and forth
Speaker 4: he had with Canda Owens.
Speaker 16: A name that comes to mind in the news recently
Speaker 16: is Julian Julian Assange. You know, he was exposing this
Speaker 16: corruption early on. He's had his life ruined because of it.
Speaker 16: It's a really sad story. Edward Snowden, I mean, think
Speaker 16: about that.
Speaker 6: Bravery for me.
Speaker 16: I was quite young when that was going on. But
Speaker 16: I mean the idea of saying, hey, whistle blowing, Actually
Speaker 16: we've got some corruption going on. They're not being honest
Speaker 16: with the American people. You could have had a chance
Speaker 16: a part of these individuals. Why do side not to
Speaker 16: in that moment?
Speaker 15: You have two sides of it. In one case you
Speaker 15: have like sort of a spy deal going on, and
Speaker 15: in another case you have somebody that's exposing real corruption.
Speaker 15: I feel a little bit I won't say which one,
Speaker 15: but I feel a little bit more strongly about one
Speaker 15: than the other. Right, But and you probably understand that.
Speaker 15: But I could have done it. But I will say,
Speaker 15: you have people on both sides of that issue, good
Speaker 15: people on both sides, and you have some bad people
Speaker 15: on one side. But I decided to let that one ride,
Speaker 15: let the courts work it out.
Speaker 6: I love that.
Speaker 5: One of the biggest controversies of his presidency was the
Speaker 5: good people on both sides moment, which I still take
Speaker 5: issue with a lot of the reporting on that, and
Speaker 5: he's just still going with it. Very good people on
Speaker 5: both sides are totally unfazed. But you did see him
Speaker 5: get a little phased in that. Not to be a
Speaker 5: hacky cable news bodyline gouge expert, but you really don't
Speaker 5: see Donald Trump like cross his arms and get uncomfortable
Speaker 5: like that very often. But you're right, Ryan, I think
Speaker 5: to read discomfort into that question with Candicellens.
Speaker 3: And which one is he talking about here? So it
Speaker 3: seems like so Snowden.
Speaker 6: I don't think he knows what he's talking about. I
Speaker 6: think he's just talking.
Speaker 4: Sounded like yeah to me, it sounded like he was
Speaker 4: not thinking about commuting or pardoning Snowden, Yeah, who is
Speaker 4: in exile in Russia. And because he said this thing
Speaker 4: about wow, there's secrets and if you're going to have
Speaker 4: a country, you've got to be able to keep your secrets,
Speaker 4: and which is really the fascinating thing that people should absorb,
Speaker 4: because if Donald Trump is like okay with the things
Speaker 4: that the NSA was doing and that Snowden exposed, and
Speaker 4: he thinks it's wrong for Snowden to expose those that
Speaker 4: really cuts against this whole idea that that Trump is
Speaker 4: deep state actually going to do anything to take on Yeah,
Speaker 4: the military intelligence establishment.
Speaker 5: Which I think is a debate we should have on
Speaker 5: the Friday Show this summer. Is Donald Trump the guy
Speaker 5: to actually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should do that because.
Speaker 5: It's a fascinating question. I asked his NSA one of
Speaker 5: his essays, Keith Kellogg, about how he saw Assannge. This
Speaker 5: was a couple of years ago, and Keith Kellogg told
Speaker 5: me that he felt like Donald Trump saw a little
Speaker 5: bit of himself in Assannge, and that from an NSSA
Speaker 5: in a very torn administration, a John Bolton Mike Pompeo administration,
Speaker 5: the administration that actually ended up bringing charges against as Songe.
Speaker 5: I just find that super interesting that he would even
Speaker 5: go so far as to say that from a Republican president,
Speaker 5: let alone a Republican president again like staff by the
Speaker 5: likes of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Genuinely interesting. And
Speaker 5: I don't know that Trump would necessarily go through with this.
Speaker 5: Biden has talked about whether he would maybe just drop
Speaker 5: the case and that's all it would take. By the
Speaker 5: way just dropped the case, and there may be some
Speaker 5: geopolitical advantage to you know, assuaging the concerns of people
Speaker 5: in Australia and internationally, especially at a time when the
Speaker 5: United States is under fire internationally. We're talking about potential
Speaker 5: Security Council veto coming up, So there may be some
Speaker 5: advantage to Biden politically in dropping the case. I could
Speaker 5: see Donald Trump actually dropping the case because you see the.
Speaker 6: Duality of Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: Every once in a while, he knows that he's been
Speaker 5: targeted by the same people who targeted snow Snowden and Assange,
Speaker 5: but at the same time he revels in the respect.
Speaker 5: You know, he filled his cabinet initially, and he staffed
Speaker 5: his cabinet initially with military people.
Speaker 6: It's just he's never picked a lane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Right.
Speaker 4: And Obama initially contemplated charging Assange and decided not to
Speaker 4: because it would be an encroachment on freedom of the press.
Speaker 3: Right, Trump, urged by Pompeo, did so.
Speaker 4: Biden has continued it and is pushing to have him extradited.
Speaker 4: Now both of them are saying they're thing about dropping
Speaker 4: the charges. It's kind of a ridiculous situation. Both of
Speaker 4: them probably too cowardly to do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I mean you'd love to It's a question
Speaker 5: you'd love to have Trump talk about in private, because
Speaker 5: I don't know if he's team Pompeo or if he's
Speaker 5: team Assange. I really don't know. I'm honestly curious.
Speaker 3: And what people on both sides.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well exactly. I wonder if he is himself split
Speaker 5: on that. I wonder if Obama himself like how he
Speaker 5: thinks about it now. I think he's still probably very
Speaker 5: anti Massannge. But it's the case is so absurd that
Speaker 5: I think it presents them real questions for these leaders
Speaker 5: to grapple with, especially if you're Donald Trump and you
Speaker 5: came in to clean house.
Speaker 4: And then he also at the Libertarian Convention said he
Speaker 4: would said he would commute the sentence of Ross Olbricht. Yes,
Speaker 4: who is it cause to lab on the libertarian in
Speaker 4: the libertarian world, for he was a Silk Road founder.
Speaker 4: I know there was a lot of pressure on him
Speaker 4: from people close to him while he was president, and
Speaker 4: there was hope that he would do that. Then he
Speaker 4: never did it. Does does Ross? It does seem like
Speaker 4: she should like it seems like Ross got the book
Speaker 4: thrown at him for the same thing that like a
Speaker 4: lot of websites do, like they have illegal activity on them.
Speaker 4: He was probably a little bit more okay with it, yeah,
Speaker 4: than others.
Speaker 3: But it is.
Speaker 4: That a cause on the right beyond the libertarian movement,
Speaker 4: just the libertarians.
Speaker 5: I think Trump has the power to elevate it beyond libertarians.
Speaker 5: But it's such a I think it is genuinely a
Speaker 5: more complicated case than the Assange one is, Like, it's
Speaker 5: it's a little bit.
Speaker 3: Less clear cut, some weird stuff.
Speaker 5: The trumped up hacking stuff with Assange is just Blayton.
Speaker 4: It's not a free press thing really, it's just a
Speaker 4: more like, yeah, Justice Department overreach.
Speaker 5: And Thomas Massey has said that it's the greatest affront
Speaker 5: to the Eighth Amendment that he's aware of, basically, So, like,
Speaker 5: I think there is a pretty ross case, yeah, the
Speaker 5: Albert case, and I think there's a pretty big there's
Speaker 5: there are huge glaring questions about the length of the sentence.
Speaker 6: I think we're talking it's like he has a crazy, crazy.
Speaker 5: Role yeah, yeah, yeah, which I think he's forty years
Speaker 5: old around there and this all happen now. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: just it is genuinely ridiculous, and some of the charges
Speaker 5: I think are ridiculous too, but it's just more complicated
Speaker 5: than the Assauge ones.
Speaker 6: So if Donald Trump really takes it up.
Speaker 5: I was actually surprised he even dropped it at the
Speaker 5: Libertarian Convention, just because.
Speaker 6: I don't I actually think if you explained it to.
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, he would be like, you know, I feel
Speaker 5: like someone just wrote that into the speech. But yeah,
Speaker 5: who knows. I think he was in the Candicellens interview
Speaker 5: sort of talking to avoid the question a little bit,
Speaker 5: and I don't know that i'd take what he said
Speaker 5: too seriously, but I could see him potentially pardoning Assange
Speaker 5: if he felt like he was getting a good deal
Speaker 5: with Australia. I don't think he has a strong sort
Speaker 5: of neo conservative position like Pompeo does on Assannge. I
Speaker 5: think he could be persuaded to sort of use it
Speaker 5: as a bargaining chip in a way that you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of Republican presidents NICKI Haley, for example, certainly wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh for sure, let's preview the Friday Show a
Speaker 4: little bit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm really excited about this one.
Speaker 4: We were going to have Meddi Hassan debating Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 4: Meddi agreed could not get Ben.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 4: We heard back, and then we went to find somebody
Speaker 4: else and basically could find nobody who was willing to
Speaker 4: debate Matty.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say, in fairness, I don't even know
Speaker 5: that Ben got We emailed him, but I don't know
Speaker 5: that he actually won't got it. So if you take
Speaker 5: your email, yes, we'd love to host that.
Speaker 3: But well, yeah, he'll he'll come back whenever.
Speaker 5: We had a really hard time, yeah, a really hard
Speaker 5: time putting.
Speaker 4: Know way you want to go to toe with Matti,
Speaker 4: which I don't blame them for. I wouldn't argue that
Speaker 4: the world is round in a debate with Meddi.
Speaker 5: That's true. Producer Mac, Producer Griffin put in a lot
Speaker 5: of hours.
Speaker 6: The last week.
Speaker 5: You and I were like pinging people and dms and
Speaker 5: email and it was even a week's time, which is
Speaker 5: like a lifetime in the world of news. It was
Speaker 5: hard to stitch that one together. But we're still holding
Speaker 5: out in hope that we can get someone at Meddi
Speaker 5: on the ICC specifically, but this Friday show we actually
Speaker 5: are putting together a reporter. A friend, Ryan's a reporter
Speaker 5: who wrote just a fantastic new book on a deep
Speaker 5: dive into the world of lobbying, the sort of secret,
Speaker 5: shadowy world of lobbying that has changed a lot in
Speaker 5: recent years.
Speaker 3: Since the point of the book called The Wolves of
Speaker 3: k Streets. Till Friday to read it.
Speaker 6: Yes, oh good luck.
Speaker 5: It's a long book book with a top lobbyist, one
Speaker 5: of the top lobbyst spenders. I think in twenty eighteens,
Speaker 5: Sam Goodaldick, who's been on the show before. This is
Speaker 5: going to be fantastic. I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this will be fun and we hope you come
Speaker 4: out of it like knowing more about lobbying basically anybody
Speaker 4: else like you.
Speaker 6: We want to pull the curtain back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I don't think any of the shows that
Speaker 5: I can imagine and like elite media spaces would do
Speaker 5: that or would get people to be able to come
Speaker 5: to a place where they felt comfortable having that discussion publicly.
Speaker 6: So it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I guess come back on Friday for that.
Speaker 5: Come back on Friday or Thursday night if you're a
Speaker 5: premium subscriber, if you're having any troubles again. You can
Speaker 5: support it email support at locals dot com and copy
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Speaker 5: Griffin who is here to help. No breakers left behind.
Speaker 5: The YouTube and Spotify links will be in the episode
Speaker 5: description and in your daily email. Again you get the
Speaker 5: show early. The Friday show early on Thursday is the
Speaker 5: full Counterpoints Show without any Edits just early to your
Speaker 5: inbox right away on Wednesdays. So we will see you
Speaker 5: back here next week.
Speaker 3: See you then,